With Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, blogs, and instant messaging available, a lot of small businesses and professionals – the complacent ones — question the effectiveness of Email Marketing.
Couldn’t I just post a status update to Facebook instead of sending a marketing email? Couldn’t I spend that time concentrating on other marketing activities? I get most of my business by word of mouth, through the yellow pages. Who needs it?
Consider the following statistics, from a 2011 study by News Broadcast Network, Inc.
And consider this: to get an account on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr, what’s the first thing you need? Yep, an email address. Because email is fast, convenient, and green, consumers prefer using email for business correspondence. And, unlike a Twitter account, practically everyone has one.
So, have you you looked in your inbox recently and paid attention to who uses email marketing?
Large companies such as Target, WalMart, Groupon, to name a few. Sure, they have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts just like you. But, in addition, they use email marketing, they use it often, and they use it well. Your competitors are also using email marketing, taking the lunch right off your table.
That’s because they understand three marketing essentials that all successful businesseses understand. And I’m not talking about the theoretical 3 P’s of marketing you may have learned in college: product, place, and price. Sure, those are relevant.
What I’m talking about the real 3 P’s: persistence, persistence, persistence.
Different studies show different statistics, but the general rule of thumb with any business is that the customer must be exposed to your offering at least 7 or 8 times before they will make a decision to purchase.
In addition, the customer learns about your business the same way they learn facts in school. Our educational system demonstrates that being exposed to knowledge in a variety of forms, over and over again, will reinforce that knowledge to the point that it becomes easily recalled.
So, is it enough that the customer sees your ad in the Google sponsored links? No.
Is it enough that the customer visits your website and reads about the wonderful products and services you offer? No, but getting warmer.
The fact is, your marketing efforts need to support one another in order to make that final sale.
For example, your potential customer visited the website you worked hard on. That’s great – money well spent on the web hosting. But what now? Cross your fingers and hope they’re in a buying mood?
An inexpensive, personalized, and proven approach is to capture the email address of your website visitor. Offer them free information, a free gift, an incentive for subscribing to your mailing list. Then, you have on your hands a gold mine. A formula for getting the customer to your site again and again, without blowing your advertising budget.
The special offer they receive in their inbox may be that 7th or 8th exposure they’ve had to your business — the one that makes the sale.
Welcome to the Email Marketing Professional Blog. Here, you will find:
Please read our disclaimer.
By default, your ProMail account settings use port 587, over a TLS connection. If for some reason port 587 is blocked on your network, you can try these alternate settings:
Port: 2525
Use TLS: Yes or No
Port: 465
Use SSL: Yes
Port: 25
Use TLS: Yes or No
Note: This port is often monitored by hosting companies and is not recommended for email blasts for over 1000 emails per day.
You’re excited about marketing your product or service.
So it’s tempting to hit the send button to get your marketing email out there quickly.
Hold on there. Because in the world of email marketing, you have an “email reputation,” just as your business has a reputation that’s spread by word of mouth.
And if your mailing list goes unmanaged, there’s the chance you could get spam complaints from recipients and, worst case, blacklisted by a major ISP or have your business’ email account cancelled.
So to help protect your email reputation, we’ve assembled a few best practices.
Weed Out Your List
People cancel email accounts all the time, as soon as 6 months nowadays. So, it’s important to make sure your email list is up to date and valid. The reason: if you send to a ton of bad email addresses, you look like a spammer.
TIP: You can remove any invalid emails using Email Validator Pro, free with your ProMail Account. Also:
Run Checks Before a Campaign
It’s a must: check for bounces and unsubscribers before sending out a campaign. Email Marketing Pro automatically scans your incoming email and unsubscribes recipients who have requested to be removed from your list.
Back Up Your Database
Your Email Marketing Pro database contains the subscriber preferences of your mailing list, so make sure to keep it backed up. You can do this under Help > Backup Database.
Strongly Consider Getting a ProMail Account
No, this isn’t just a sales pitch. We truly want our software users to enjoy worry-free mail sending, so we set up an intelligent outgoing mail system just for you.
When you sign up for a ProMail account, our bulk mail servers automatically provide email authentication, feedback loops that detect spam reports, bounce and complaint handling (fact: even the best email marketers get SPAM complaints).
This is fancy talk for: send as many emails as you like, without the worries.
The subscribe form is where your website visitors enter their email address to sign up for your newsletter or other email marketing campaign. You’ll just need to enter a few pieces of information to create the form. Then copy/paste the code we generate for you to your web page.
The subscribe form creator will prompt you for just a few pieces of information:
The subscribe form consists of a snippet of html code and javascript. You will need to add the html code and javascript to the web page that will display your subscribe form.
How does it all work?
The subscribe form creation tool is here: http://www.emailmarketingprofessional.com/subscribe/create.php
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Of the hundreds of email marketing messages sitting in my inbox this holiday season, one that definitely got opened was a marketing email from Neflix. If you’re a Netflix customer, you may have seen it. The subject line reads, “Have an extra DVD rental on us this holiday.” The subject line stood out, I think, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that it presented a concise call to action. The strong verb “have” led me to believe, correctly, that if I were to open the email, that I would end up having something of benefit to me. And, it did its job well of creating in me the desire to act: in this case, to open the email.
I began to wonder if the call to action was a common tactic in email subject lines, and have found in my informal way that it is, in fact, not a comonly used tactic. Most marketers try to make me open their emails by using catchy, cute, or gimmicky subject lines that fail to make me want to act upon anything. Some examples in my inbox are: “Your next vacaction starts today.” Really, I think, I’m not even packed and certainly haven’t planned to go anywhere anytime soon, much less today. Another: “spend the day brainstorming with me.” No, thanks, that sounds like work and I don’t have time. “Be the first to know about our latest promos and freebies,” reads another. Oh, you expect me to believe that I’ll be the first person to know? Doesn’t inspire me to open the email.
Once I opened the offer from Netflix, I found a simple, short, well-designed coupon with an obvious and easy-to follow call to action. The overall result: I get a free DVD. Netflix retains a loyal customer who certainly will not unsubscribe from their mailing list, if I can get something out of it.
Problem: When opening the Queue Manager in Email Marketing Pro Small Business, you receive an error that reads: “Unhandled exception … Retrieving the COM clas factory component with CLSID {2610271F-3EB5-4370-99C7-F0FBFCCAE05F} failed due to the following error: 80040154
Solution: We will need to register a file on the computer that Email Marketing Pro needs to run correctly. Follow these steps to check for the existence of the file, open a command interface in Windows and register the file on your computer.
Step 1. Open your Email Marketing Pro program folder. The program folder is:
32 bit Windows: C:\Program Files\Atlantic Software\Email Marketing Professional 2011 (Small Business version)\
64 bit Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Atlantic Software\Email Marketing Professional 2011 (Small Business version\
Step 2. Check for a file called SMTPQMgr.dll. If it is NOT there, then download it by clicking here and copy it to the Email Marketing Pro folder.
Step 3: On Windows Vista and above, open a command prompt as an administrator by typing “cmd” in the Windows search box. Then right-click the program cmd and select “Run As Administrator, as shown below:
Step 4: In the Command window, type one of the following commands, depending on your version of Windows
64 bit:
regsvr32 “C:\Program Files (x86)\Atlantic Software\Email Marketing Professional 2011 (Small Business Version)\SmtpQMgr.dll”
32 bit:
regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Atlantic Software\Email Marketing Professional 2011 (Small Business Version)\SmtpQMgr.dll”
Important note: This information is intended as a guide only. Your email account provider can change its email policy at any time without any prior notification. Check your email account provider’s documentation or ask about the email send rate and bulk email policies, before proceeding with a mass email campaign.
Subscribing to our monthly plan will enable you to use Email Marketing Pro without worrying about send limits.
Google Gmail Email Send Rate Limit & Restrictions
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Google Gmail account:
MSN Hotmail Email Send Rate Limit & Restrictions
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Hotmail account:
Yahoo Mail – Email Send Rate Limits & Other Email Restrictions
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Yahoo Mail account:
Lycos Mail – Email Send Limits & Restrictions
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Lycos Mail account:
AOL Email Send (Rate) Limits
AOL imposes a rate limit on an AOL member when a member exceeds the acceptable number of email messages sent in a given time period. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from an AOL connection:
This article contains information about the email send limits (rate limit) of most important Internet Service Providers, as we collected from web resources or directly from the support desk of ISPs. The information is intended as a guide only.
Your ISP can change its outbound email policy at any time without any prior notification. It is always a good idea to understand your email account provider’s email send rate, before proceeding with a mass email campaign.
For some customers, it is sufficient to use the “throttle” setting in their campaign settings or schedule their email distribution. In addition, you may have a business class ISP account or be able to work out an arrangement with your ISP.
Subscribing to our monthly plan will enable you to work around these limits.
Verizon Email Send & SMTP Limits
The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a verizon.net email account:
Comcast Email Send & SMTP Limits
Below you can find the Comcast email send or rate limit for Comcast high speed internet customers. Please note that Comcast can also block port 25 for your connection (triggering the error message: “Error #1: Port25.Secure(SSL); no Socket Error: 10053. Error Number 0x800CC0F”), in order to prevent you (or viruses on your computer) from sending emails using your own SMTP agent.
These limits may not apply to business class customers.
EarthLink Email Send & SMTP Limits (“SMTP Rate Limiting”)
When you reached your EarthLink email send limit, you will receive the following error message from the EarthLink SMTP server: “error 554: www.earthlink.net/go/bulk – Outbound message limit exceeded”. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from an EarthLink internet connection:
Cablevision Email Send & SMTP Limits (Optimum – OOL)
Cablevision / Optimum does NOT allow customers to send emails using an email client program or SMTP mail server, unless the customer subscribed to “Optimum Online Boost” or “Optimum Online for Business”.
Road Runner Email Send & SMTP Limits
If your account has reached the email send limit, you will receive the following error message: “ERROR:5.7.1:550 Outbound Mail Refused – YOUR_IP_ADDRESS”. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from a Road Runner internet connection:
Cox Email Send & SMTP Limits
Cox did not publish the official email send limit for Cox High Speed Internet subscribers. According to the Cox web site: “Specific email sending limits are not published because they vary from time to time depending on a variety of factors“. We strongly advise you to contact the Cox support department before sending out large amounts of emails.
AT&T Yahoo! Email Send & SMTP Limits
Please note that, according to the AT&T Yahoo! Membership Agreement, AT&T Yahoo! can assess a charge of $50.00 per day for unintentional violations or $500.00 per day for deliberate violations of their unsolicited email policy. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from an AT&T Yahoo! Internet/email connection:
Charter Email Rate Limits
If you are a Charter Internet access residential customer and you receive the following error message when trying to send emails: “421 Connection Refused – Customer has exceeded the maximum number of messages allowed per hour”, it means your account SMTP access was temporarily blocked. The following restrictions apply when emailing from a Charter connection:
BellSouth Email Send & Rate Limits
BellSouth does not publish a clear email send limit: “Sending mass, unsolicited e-mail by Service users is prohibited. BellSouth Internet Services reserves the right, in BellSouth’s sole discretion, to determine whether such email constitutes unsolicited messages or transmission. Sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail to a single user, or group of users, commercial or otherwise, by Service users is prohibited.”.
It’s a good idea to back up your Email Marketing Pro database periodically. In the event of a hardware failure you do not want to lose your contacts and campaigns. It’s also a good idea to back up before upgrading or re-installing Email Marketing Pro.
Future versions of Email Marketing Pro will have an automatic backup. For now, you will have to back up manually or schedule a task in Windows to do it for you. Backing up your database manually is quick and easy to do.
The first step is to locate the database. The next step is to copy it to your backup folder.
Step 1: Locate the Database
The database is in a file called DBPro.mdb and is located in your application data folder. To access your application data folder, simply type %appdata% in your Windows Search or Run box, accessible by clicking the Windows Start button. The file locations for the database are as follows:
Email Marketing Pro Professional Version
%appdata%\EMPPro\DBPro.mdb
(usually: C:\Users\[Your UserName]\AppData\Roaming\EMPPro\DBPro.mdbEmail Marketing Pro Small Business Version
%appdata%\EMPSB\DBPro.mdb
(usually: C:\Users\[Your UserName]\AppData\Roaming\EMPSB\DBPro.mdb
Step 2: Copy to your backup folder
1. Right-click DBPro.mdb. In the shortcut menu, select copy
2. On your back up drive, right-click the folder you want to copy the database into and select Paste.